It's a reference to something Times media columnist David Carr says in the movie: "I still can’t get over the feeling that Brian Stelter was a robot assembled in the basement of The New York Timesto come and destroy me.”

The robot part is that he moves his elbow and content comes out. While he’s chatting, he’s also tweeting and blogging—and, you know, I’ll think that’s cute, and then the next day he’ll be on the front page with a synthetic piece about the analytics of television or new media, which he also covers. If Brian wasn’t such a decent guy, I would actually slip something into his food or quietly suffocate him with a pillow.

Stelter's other nickname is Svelter, earned for having lost many pounds and gaining lantern-jaw style good looks.

We hear Lapin and Stelter have been dating for a while and now and have been quiet about it.

The gossip is that Stelter had to clear the relationship with his editors before he was allowed to go public with it. Lapin is techinically in his beat. UPDATE: Stelter clarifies:

The gossip is wrong. I informed my editor (not editors) immediately, on May 31, and I suggested that I refrain from covering CNBC in a significant way in the future.My editor told Gawker: From now on, "he just doesn't cover CNBC. If there's a passing reference to the network in a blog post or ratings story, I'm not going to get too worked up. We'll steer clear of anything beyond that."